It did not take long for the tea baggers and right wingers to go to the microphones and lament the existent of unelected judges. What drivel. The Supreme Court is established in the constitution and on purpose they were made judges for life and were unelected. They have made some mistakes in the past, but for the most part I am glad they are there.

The thing is, the Supreme Court is likely to lose at least one judge in what remains of Obama's term and the Republicans will use every tactic possible to keep him from getting a liberal judge into the Court.

It should be noted that the Supremes basically punted on the California Prop 8 (antigay marriage) decision. They did let the lower court ruling invalidating the law stand, but the basis wasn't constitutional. Rather, they decided that the party bringing the appeal had no standing in the Supreme Court.

What does "standing" (actually "legal standing") mean? From Wikipedia:

"In law, standing or locus standi is the term for the ability of a party to demonstrate to the court sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case. Standing exists from one of three causes:" (more)

In effect, the court asked "Why are you here? Do you have a dog in this fight?" and decided that they were the wrong type of party to bring the suit.

I think the DOMA decision strongly hints what will eventually happen when the right party brings the Prop 8 appeal, but for now the state court ruling stands.

Sadly, it may take more decisions by the Supremes to settle all the issues.

Marriage equality supporters are understandably ecstatic that the Supreme Court has declared section three of DOMA unconstitutional.

...for a subset of same-sex partners, the ruling won’t truly guarantee them equal treatment under the law.

The nature of the court’s DOMA decision, combined with its decision to punt the California Prop 8 case about whether there’s a constitutional right to gay marriage, will ultimately create a sort of three-tiered status for same-sex partners.

The first tier is same sex married couples who live in states that allow same sex marriage. They gained the most from today’s decision. The third tier is same sex couples who live in states that do not recognize same sex marriage. They gained very little direct benefit from the court striking down DOMA. The middle tier is where things get complicated: same sex couples who marry in one state but then choose to move (or more likely are forced to, for work, family, or other reasons) to a state that doesn’t allow same sex marriage. (read a lot more here)

"Marriage equality supporters are understandably ecstatic that the Supreme Court has declared section three of DOMA unconstitutional."

And doubtless, none were more ecstatic than divorce lawyers, who just saw their client base expand exponentially. Come on, gays don't get along any better than straights do, once you get past that, "us against them" thing, they have the same personality issues we all do --

Oh absolutely. And in fact it is a very good argument for the overturning of the DOMA position. Divorces amongst gays are just as likely to be acrimonious and involve children, not just finances. It is important that a non-involved third party, such as a court, should be able to manage the separating couples' access to children as well as fair distribution of assets.

I wonder what this will do for gays in Colorado who avail themselves of domestic partnerships. We passed via referendum a constitutional ban on same sex marriage, but the legislature just took as much as they could from that by legalizing domestic partnership, which have most if not all of the legal privileges of a marriage under Colorado law.

Will the feds consider DPs as having the same legal priveleges as a marriage?

One other part of DOMA that (apparently) was untouched was the part where a state that bans same sex marriage is shielded from recognizing those marriages from other states (which one could argue violates the "full faith and credit" clause).